Policy —

Claim your $16! Comcast P2P settlement now final

Despite a campaign to derail the settlement, a long-running class-action lawsuit against Comcast and its P2P-blocking ways has ended. If you were a Comcast subscriber between April 1, 2006 and December 31, 2008, and you used the Ares, BitTorrent, eDonkey, FastTrack, or Gnutella P2P networks, congratulations—you've just won $16 in the litigation lottery.

A California resident filed Hart v. Comcast back in 2007, alleging that the cable giant wasn't living up to its contract because it limited "the speed of certain internet applications such as peer-to-peer file sharing and lotus notes [sic]."

This was a reference to Comcast's infamous use of "TCP reset packets" to limit the number of P2P connections, a decision that eventually led to a long FCC investigation that went against Comcast (and was recently overturned by a federal DC court).

Other, similar lawsuits were filed, but Hart had been first, so he became the lead plaintiff in a class action suit that was consolidated into a single case in Pennsylvania. In late 2009, Comcast agreed to settle the case by setting up a $16 million compensation fund; each affected subscriber could pick up $16 to make up for the pain of those interrupted P2P downloads of (*cough*) Linux ISOs.

Robb Topolski, the network engineer and barbershop music aficionado who discovered Comcast's throttling technique, objected. When users had paid around $50 a month for service, $16 seemed like small compensation. "If that tiny amount of money is compensation, then there is no penalty to Comcast for interfering with its customers, for failing to disclose it, for repeatedly lying about it, and for taking so long to stop it!" wrote Topolski two months ago. He asked people to object or exclude themselves from the settlement.

But the lead lawyer in the case told Ars that it was the best deal anyone was going to get. "This is a good settlement," said Eric Somers. "If you opt out, you're basically giving that money to Comcast."

Last week, the federal judge overseeing the case agreed that it was in everyone's interests to settle the murky case (How exactly does one quantify the damages here? And didn't Comcast's contract make clear that the company would manage "congestion"? And how did Comcast's win in the DC Circuit affect the issue?).

Besides, almost no one objected. "Despite... a vigorous opt out campaign by Robert Topolski, the named plaintiff in one of the coordinated actions, only 6 individuals filed objections to the settlement (one of which was later withdrawn)," wrote the judge, and "only 143 individuals submitted timely requests for exclusion (some of which actually indicated an absence of individual claims to pursue), and no state or federal officials intervened. In light of the estimated size of the class (1,000,000 individuals), the percentage of objections (.0006%) and opt outs (.0143%) is exceedingly low."

So the settlement is now final. Comcast account holders have until August 29, 2010 to file a claim in the case. The lawyers will do a bit better, splitting $3 million for their work on the case.